It’s a Dog’s Life

My son Chad and his family (along with the extended family) are going through the trauma of their black and tan female miniature dachshund, Harley, coming down suddenly with the infirmities of old age. The reaction is as if she was a human family member, and I completely understand why.

I grew up with dogs, both inside the house and outside in the yard. My mother kept housedogs and my father, as a coon hunter, raised coon hounds, both purebred and grade. My wife Sylvia did not grow up that way, but it was not until our sons left home (or thereabouts) that I experenced, primarily because of her, life without at least one dog. Not that this is a point of contention between us — I agree that not having a dog means you don’t have to worry about being tied down like my parents found themselves, due to owning lots of dogs and lots of livestock. By paying the price of not having a dog around, we are going to be able to travel whenever, if my “real” retirement ever gets here (Right now I am half-time, semi-retired, quasi-retired, neo-retired?).

But I still need my “dog fix,” and I try to get it through Harley when I visit Chad, or through Bill and Pamela Adling’s dogs when I visit them. Once you love dogs, you never get over them, nor, in my opinion, do you ever want to.

Why is this so for so much of mankind?

A favorite dichotomy of classifying all of us (like a wine person compared to a beer person) is “Are you a dog or cat person?” Without question, I am dog/beer. I don’t hate cats and wine — I just don’t care for either so much, when compared to dogs and beer. (Add “dog freak” to the Long List — I think it already contains the beer thing.) Now, I know there are exceptions: my wife Sylvia is neither dog/cat nor wine/beer; some are both dog/cat or both wine/beer, or “both-both.” And all the other combinations of these categories I did not mention!

My preference, because of the way I was raised, is hounds. I prefer beagles, dachshunds (short hair), basset hounds, blood hounds, fox hounds, and, of course, all breeds of coon hounds. (Delightfully, Westminster Kennel Club recently added new coon dog breeds to its show — to Black and Tans, Blueticks, and Redbones, have been added Plotts and English coon hounds — anyone know the sixth breed (I know from my dad’s coonhound mags)? Treeing Walkers, which looked similar to fox hounds, only with a heavier muzzle.) My dad raised purebred and grade Black and Tans, along with a Redbone or two. My parents raised a couple of carefully planned (NOT a puppy mill) litters of pure-bred Black and Tans: some of the greatest memories of my childhood are rolling around in the back yard playing with those puppies! I can today walk on the same spots where I played so, as Sylvia and I have restored the house in Cisco where I grew up and helped my parents raise dogs. [Come to think of it, I got to do the same thing with a litter of Beagle puppies Runt Dill of Cisco had at his house one time — it was awesome!] My nuclear family and all my friends from my childhood out there in cyberspace who visited the “Hastings’ kennels” know what I am talking about. I have a great collection of memorabilia from coon hunting, showing coon dogs on benches at dog show contests (like Westminster), and, of course, coon hounds hunting raccoons.

But to state my “tastes” in dogs is not a sufficient answer. It does not account for why dogs are so purvasive in human culture across the globe. If you have been watching “dog specials” on TV, including “The Dog Whisperer,” and have been paying any attention to research in animal psychology (That’s what I said — animal psychology!), you know there are some interesting answers out there.

A recent piece of research, of which Chad recently reminded me, is that the brain activity in humans is virtually the same for humans when shown either a picture of a human baby or a picture of a cute puppy. To me this means the affinity we have with dogs has to go way back, in order to be so deep in our psyche. In turn, we have to look at paleoanthropology, archeology, present anthropology, and evolutionary psychology.

Close, but probably not quite, to a consensus among those who study the origins of our culture is the view that we as hunter/gatherers (prior to, say, 10,000 yrs ago) began keeping wolf puppies in our camps because they were good alarms to danger and good deterrents to unwanted varmits. Our children loved to play with them (like me rolling in the back yard), they were nice hand, feet, and bed warmers, and they were handy, especially when, in addition to their roles around the camp, they began applying their natural hunting instincts toward aiding the men tracking game. All you had to do to make them better is toss them a morsel or two.

Think about this process from the wolves’-becoming-dogs point of view. [What does seem to be a consensus now is that all breeds of domesticated dogs came from wolves exclusively, and not perhaps some from jackels or foxes, or coyotes, as formerally speculated. DNA has settled that issue.] This adoption is a nice fit psychologically for the canine: it feels as if it has been accepted by another pack of predators, but a pack in which the wolf/dog cannot become leader — but, this is a small price to pay for such a cushy position. You get fed for doing things that come naturally to you, and get stroked and otherwise pampered to boot! And you do not have to risk life and limb in the savage world of nature getting something to eat — the food thing is done for you! And all in a safe environment to which you have the satisfaction of contributing. This is a good deal! It is like being on life-long R&R!

Recent research shows that a completely wild population of captive canines (Russian silver foxes) can be turned via selective breeding (select only docile pups receptive to human love) (within a handful of generations) into a population of domesticated foxes! They actually change physically (wagging tails, spotted coats, prolonged puppy features and behavior into adulthood (neoteny), etc.) as the population is genetically shifted toward domestic behavior, and they remind you of our modern dogs.

So, by the time agriculture rolls around (less than 10,000 yrs ago) the wolf/dog is now a canine that cannot possibly survive without the services provided by humans, either still in nomadic hunter/gatherer groups or now settled in permanent agricultural settlements; they have become what we recognize as dogs, completely dependent upon man. And, in addition, they have added to their list of services patroling storage bins for mice and rats that are ravaging the harvest stored to get everyone through winter. This service was also picked up by (here they come) wild ferrel cats, who could deal with the varmits at least as well as could the dogs, and who found in humans the same good deal as the dogs had done. Cats, as we now know them, became as dependent upon people as dogs.

But dogs have an advantage, in my opinion, over cats in competition for the “resort” features of giving up the wild for the world of humans. Dogs “think” more like humans than do cats. Humans live in packs, too, like wolves, only we call them “families,” or “villages,” or “towns” etc. Humans hunt in packs (go out and work), like wolves. Humans form permanent bonds with sexual mates (pair bonding) and with other pack members (relatives, friends). The dog recognizes what it sees in humans, and humans recognize what they see in dogs. Not so with the cats. This is perhaps why, when growing up, in my family cats were relegated to necessary-to-feed guardians of the barns and sheds to keep away the mice and rats. We would rather have the dogs stay with us in the house overnight, rather than cats, who can be kept outside in the barns 24/7.

Dogs relate to humans with a pack mentality; they want to please their “master,” the “leader of the pack.” For some dogs that master is a one-time designation; for others the leader is seen as whoever will feed them and give them shelter. Some dogs (see “The Dog Whisperer”) see their master as unworthy as the being the leader of the pack, perhaps wanting to be the alpha male or alpha female themselves — how many times has Cesar said “you’ve got to show them who’s boss!”?

On the other hand, cats don’t have a pack orientation [One exception is the formation of prides among lions in Africa, an adaptation unusual among felines due to the extreme measures demanded of the top predator in the unique niches of East Africa.]. They still think of themselves as solitary hunters sneaking up on their food bowls dailly. The dog sees its master and thinks, “How great to see my master again!” while the cat thinks, “That thing is still too big to attack and eat.” No wonder cats seem aloof and independent, and dogs seem loving, attentive, and dependent.

My mother, while she was in assisted living, used to participate in a visiting-dog program wherein dogs just hung around the residents for a while being petted, etc. — hung around just “being dogs.” As the residents petted and talked to the dogs, you could see stress and anxiety diminish, in both humans and canines. When I was present with my mom at these times, I felt so privileged that she and I could share so much of our lives together conjured merely by the presence of a dog; we swapped Hastings dog stories; my life and her life had been made better by domesticated, docile wolves — dogs she and I lived with together in Cisco.

It could be argued that humans and dogs share a symbiotic relationship of mutual interdependence. Psychologically, we have co-evolved. Take a long, loving look into your dog’s eyes the next time he/she lays its head in your lap or lays down at your feet, and you will feel a deep connection, I predict. The question is, which of the two species, human or canine, shaped the other more?

RJH